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Saturday, February 28, 2015

We are on the last of the winter weather I think. I wanted (between paintings for a watercolor deadline) to paint some bright colors and the feeling of warm sunshine...
For me, it is a challenge to paint these tiny limbs so I think I will scale this up and see if that makes it technically easier.

First, the colors were thickly painted over the original painting. Then they were scraped across their borders and redeposited in the neighboring areas. This moving of paint also thins the paint on the board, making it easy to repaint the image.

I thought I wanted to repaint both the melon slice and the plate it was resting on. When I re painted the melon and plate, I used stronger more chromatic paint (cad red, straight cad orange and browns)

Here an orange and a marble were added to the original composition. I left the marble hard-edged and made it gently glow. I worked to have the orange seem to be more abstract and ill-defined on the left and emerge more realistically on its right side. Now, the warm brown on the right seemed isolated.

Therefore, I added some back to the left side.
This is a better quality image of the painting so far.
I think that the many lines on the left need some softening.

This is the final version.

To play with this one needs
1. lots of paint on the canvas or board to be able to move it around
2. a willingness to experiment with the interplay of color as you put colors from the foreground into the background and vice versa
3. a question for the painting: "What if...?"
4. a lack of preciousness: One has to be willing to toss it out if the answer to the painting question is "That didn't work..."

Saturday, February 21, 2015

This is a small all prima study examining how to paint transparency...
The warm colors on the side opposite the light source seem to be very important. For example: the cad red on the lower right of the lowest right grape. the yellow on the large marble, the alizarin crimson on the blue-black marble. I will try this again with the next study.

Friday, February 20, 2015

This is a small painting (5 x 7) that is a commission of a beautiful rescue dog. His colors allowed for the warm/cool that gave him form.
Watermark instructions: Here is a step-by-step instructionallink.You can do this for free and once you have your template of your signature, you can change the size and color on each new photograph.

Below is a little study (4 x 4) of a spider mum. One of my new students brought this is paint and I wasn't certain how to approach it...

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

This is another painting of apples that wasn't working. Again, I overpainted the original painting with these beautiful colors and worked to scratch out edges. The whole apple was too "important" (it was a large dark red mass) so I overlaid background color pieces to make it "in and out" of the foreground. I loved the streaks of reds, so I left them. Again, the watermark is added.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

We are expecting record lows as the week progresses, so I think I will finish my bright-paintings.
I am reinforcing my new watermark "skill". (Those of you who have been my students know that my pediatrician-background sneaks in. I often remind (especially my adult learners) that permanent memory requires active learning and forgetting seven times). In case you are wondering, I am adding a watermark, so that if any of my images get to Pinterest, they can be traced back. Personally, I am terrible at filing. I often have an image of a painting that I adore and I have no recollection of where or who it came from. Copying is not a concern for me. I still have so very much to learn...

Sunday, February 15, 2015

I have just completed two awesome days teaching.
This little painting was inspired by two special ladies. One goal for these two adventurous fabulous students was to experiment with fracturing. I have played around with destroying edges with rubber scrapers, brush ends, knives, credit cards and the tool described previously devised by Julie Ford Oliver. I have watched David Shevlino destroy and rebuild his paintings until they are wonderful on u tube. While looking for reference material for our class, Pinterest suggested a pin of a painting by Ann Feldman who also has a wonderful on line demo of interesting painting studies including mosaics and fracturing.
Until today, this painting was an 8 x 8 study of an apple and slices that was uninspired and lifeless. The colors were wonderful (cads and caribbean blue) and the apple slices were fairly well (and realistically) rendered. However, the painting seemed to reside permanently on my "fix or discard" pile. At last, it has been overpainted with thick color, a knife, a fracturing tool and a credit card and I love it.

I also learned how to easily add a watermark, so I will describe that later this week and tell you about what I learned from my other new special students.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

I don't play golf, so I looked up golf terms. This may not be the appropriate title. However, I wanted to paint these colors. Once painted, they suggested sand to me. Therefore, I assume this shot would be difficult and unlikely to succeed. Golfers would know if this makes any sense but that is the genesis of this title. It is "seasonal affective disorder time" for members of my family who suffer this time of year. Rather than kill them, I am trying to paint color......

Friday, February 6, 2015

I have been playing with color in all of my art again. Here is a study of the light on this golfer using mostly transparent colors. The advantage of transparent colors is that if a color doesn't suit, you can paint over it with less risk of making muddy colors.

Most of my absence from recent blogging has been due to the time spent painting large paintings to submit to competitive national juried shows. I don't expect to jury into the best shows that I enter (yet) but I do find that I learn the most by working to achieve this. I, therefore, was extremely happy and honored to learn that my painting "Bearing" juried into the Southern Watercolor Society 38th Annual Juried Exhibition 2015 (link) which will be at the Customs House Museum, Clarksville, TN opening May 8, 2015. I will post it to my web site soon. It is a large bird painting that feels very airy and oriental to me and it features some beautiful reds....

About Me

Sue ChurchGrant is a former pediatrician, now painter, who loves to paint people, especially children caught unaware. She is inspired by intense color and light . Her blog features small original watercolor or oil studies painted almost daily and her larger paintings can be found at suechurchgrant (dot) com